“Oh!” cried Mollie Gretna, “I must come!  But I daren’t go alone.  Will you come with me, dear?” turning to Rita.

“I don’t know,” was the reply.  “I may not like opium.”

“But if you do—­and I know you will?”

“Why,” said Rita, glancing rapidly at Pyne, “I suppose it would be a novel experience.”

“Let me arrange it for you,” came the harsh voice of Mrs. Sin.  “Lucy will drive you both down—­won’t you, my dear?” The shadowed eyes glanced aside at Sir Lucien Pyne.

“Certainly,” he replied.  “I am always at the ladies’ service.”

Rita Dresden settled herself luxuriously into a nest of silk and fur in another corner of the room, regarding the baronet coquettishly through her half-lowered lashes.

“I won’t go unless it is my party, Lucy,” she said.  “You must let me pay.”

“A detail,” murmured Pyne, crossing and standing beside her.

Interest now became centred upon the preparations being made by Mrs. Sin.  From the attache case she took out a lacquered box, silken-lined like a jewel-casket.  It contained four singular-looking pipes, the parts of which she began to fit together.  The first and largest of these had a thick bamboo stem, an amber mouthpiece, and a tiny, disproportionate bowl of brass.  The second was much smaller and was of some dark, highly-polished wood, mounted with silver conceived in an ornate Chinese design representing a long-tailed lizard.  The mouthpiece was of jade.  The third and fourth pipes were yet smaller, a perfectly matched pair in figured ivory of exquisite workmanship, delicately gold-mounted.

“These for the ladies,” said Mrs. Sin, holding up the pair.  “You”—­ glancing at Kilfane—­“have got your own pipe, I know.”

She laid them upon the tray, and now took out of the case a little copper lamp, a smaller lacquered box and a silver spatula, her jewelled fingers handling the queer implements with a familiarity bred of habit.

“What a strange woman!” whispered Rita to Pyne.  “Is she an oriental?”

“Cuban-Jewess,” he replied in a low voice.

Mrs. Sin carefully lighted the lamp, which burned with a short, bluish flame, and, opening the lacquered box, she dipped the spatula into the thick gummy substance which it contained and twisted the little instrument round and round between her fingers, presently withdrawing it with a globule of chandu, about the size of a bean, adhering to the end.  She glanced aside at Kilfane.

“Chinese way, eh?” she said.

She began to twirl the prepared opium above the flame of the lamp.  From it a slight, sickly smelling vapor arose.  No one spoke, but all watched her closely; and Rita was conscious of a growing, pleasurable excitement.  When by evaporation the chandu had become reduced to the size of a small pea, and a vague spirituous blue flame began to dance round the end of the spatula, Mrs. Sin pressed it adroitly into the tiny bowl of one of the ivory pipes, having first held the bowl inverted for a moment over the lamp.  She turned to Rita.